ut did not teach them the secret of
liberty. They had no quarrel with the principle of the censorship,
though they writhed under its tyranny; they did not want to abolish it.
They only complained that it was used against reason and light, that is
against their own writings; and, if the Conseil d'Etat or the Parlement
had suppressed the works of their obscurantist opponents, they would
have congratulated themselves that the world was marching quickly
towards perfection. [Footnote: The principle that intolerance on the
part of the wise and strong towards the ignorant and weak is a good
thing is not alien to the spirit of the French philosophers, though I do
not think any of them expressly asserted it. In the following century
it was formulated by Colins, a Belgian (author of two works on
social science, 1857-60), who believed that an autocratic government
suppressing liberty of conscience is the most effective instrument of
Progress. It is possible that democracy may yet try the experiment.]

CHAPTER IX. WAS CIVILISATION A MISTAKE? ROUSSEAU, CHASTELLUX. 1.

The optimistic theory of civilisation was not unchallenged by
rationalists. In the same year (1750) in which Turgot traced an outline
of historical Progress at the Sorbonne, Rousseau laid before the Academy
of Dijon a theory of historical Regress. This Academy had offered a
prize for the best essay on the question whether the revival of sciences
and arts had contributed to the improvement of morals. The prize was
awarded to Rousseau. Five years later the same learned body proposed
another subject for investigation, the origin of Inequality among men.
Rousseau again competed but failed to win the prize, though this second
essay was a far more remarkable performance.

The view common to these two discourses, that social development has
been a gigantic mistake, that the farther man has travelled from
a primitive simple state the more unhappy has his lot become, that
civilisation is radically vicious, was not original. Essentially the
same issue had been raised in England, though in a different form,
by Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, the scandalous book which aimed at
proving that it is not the virtues and amiable qualities of man that are
the cement of civilised society, but the vices of its members which
are the support of all trades and employments. [Footnote: The expanded
edition was published in 1723.] In these vices, he said, "we must look
for the true origin